Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/320

286 themselves far from shore," you know. I had a very fair notice of my book in the Independent.

Yours very truly, BELLE W. COOKE.

Of the two criticisms referred to, the Golden Era, in which one of them appeared, could not be located. The one in the Salem Mercury, which after all was not very caustic except at one point, was printed in the issue of June 10, 1871, and was as follows:

"Tears and Victory," a very suggestive title, has been assigned to a collection of poems which have been printed in a book of 250 pages. Mrs. Belle W. Cooke, of this city, is the author and E. M. Waite, printer. If it was the ambi- tion of the authoress simply to see her various productions in print, in the form of a book, why, perhaps it were well to admit into its pages all the thoughts suggested by the late unhappy strife and penned for the partisan press during the years when not to be "loil" was to be hunted down and cast out as unfit to breathe the air where "Patriots!" had the sway. But, if it was intended that the book should find a welcome to the household or a place on the center table, it had been better to have left out of it the following and many other passages fit only to be read at the time they were penned and by those they were penned for:

Such literature is out of date; its day is not the present nor yet the future.

Aside from the partisan passages and allusions the book contains, we take pleasure in pronouncing it a work of no ordinary merit. Mrs. Cooke may justly be ranked a poetess of no mean talents. If we cannot commend her judgment we must at least grant that she is not without poetic genius, and that her integrity evinces culture and literary ability.